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Tag: "FTTH"

The Broadband Properties Muni Snapshot of Jackson Energy Authority, serving Jackson Tennessee, offers a fiber-to-the-home network. As is common to the snapshots, it is heavy on technical data.

After 4 years, they had an overall take rate of 39% as well as some businesses locating in the area due to the network. Residents have saved some $8 million in aggregate since the network began offering services.

The May 2008 issue of Broadband Properties offers an overview of municipally-owned fiber-to-the-home networks across the United States. The article discusses why public power utilities are heavily represented, open vs. closed, the geographical distribution, and most importantly, the many differences between the models used by all these different communities.

In fact, what we have found is that there is no “municipal model.” Municipalities and other public entities build FTTP systems for many reasons and in many situations. They face a variety of legal and competitive landscapes, employ different financing methods, operate their systems in diverse ways, deliver different sets of services to different types of customers, and bring a diversity of resources and competencies to the task. While there are certain recurrent themes, there is no single distinguishing feature. Local differences appear to far outweigh the simple fact of public ownership.

This is a transcription of the speech Nulty gave at the 2008 Broadband Properties Summit. Nulty describes the history of the Burlington efforts before and after he joined to build their fiber-to-the-home system. He talks about incumbent obstructionist efforts, the role of consultants, and the economical questions they considered before building.

He goes on to discuss why FTTH is practical in rural areas - and less expensive than most claim. Finally, he frankly discusses some of the tensions involved with running community networks when they are a city department (as opposed to a utility that may be at arm's length or a nonprofit).

Another snapshot, mostly containing technical data on the Morristown FTTH network - FiberNET. Like many networks in Tennessee, this network is run by the municipal utility. They started signing up customers in May 2006 and by late 2008 already had a take rate of 33%.

Perhaps the most significant sign of success is that neighboring communities want service as well. By offering comparably services at lower prices, the community saves some $1.1 million/year.

Powell, a small town 5,500 in Wyoming, has pursued a rather innovative strategy to ensure the community has world-class access to the Internet. In this article, Ernie Bray describes the model and how they put it together. In short, Powell was able to leverage its city-owned fiber optic ring to attract a partner that will help in rolling out a fiber-to-the-home network.

A newly recurring feature in Broadband Properties is the Municipal FTTH Deployment Snapshot. In the first snapshot, they featured Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, this snapshot features little aside from technical details.

Their biggest success:

"We are broadcasting local sports on our cable system and have connected many new customers because of it. With our fiber system we can bring customers live audio and video of not only sports but also community events. This has been a very popular service for our community, thanks to the help from the Sequoyah County Times."

A recurring feature in Broadband Properties is the Municipal FTTH Deployment Snapshot. The Aug/Sept 2008 issue featured one of oldest municipal citywide FTTH deployments in the United States - Bristol Virgina Utilities' Optinet.

The article featured a wealth of technical data from the network as a well as a short history of their legal fights and their "Biggest Success."

Much misinformation has been disseminated about Burlington Telecom (BT).

Here are the facts. BT is a city department of Burlington, Vermont, which owns a fiber-to-the-home network and offers triple play services (phone, cable, internet). The network depends entirely on subscriber revenues and is not subsidized in any form by the City. BT has saved the City money while being built entirely with investor money -- no tax dollars have been or will be used.

BT continues to add subscribers and has a take rate above 40% in the area it first began offering services.

Benoit Felten of FiberEvolution.com interviews Tim Nulty (former GM of Burlington Telecom, currently working on massive rural FTTH network in Vermont) at the Freedom to Connect Conference. Covers many topics, especially the economics of FTTH and why the public sector should invest in these networks.

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Is subscription sales the only way our municipality is going to see a return on our $500,000 [city-owned wireless network]? Not really. We see other benefits. Police on the street longer because they can do their reports from the cars rather than the squad room. More information to our firefighters before they make scene on a possible structure fire. AMR project. Tourist access to city wide internet. These are all hard dollar and soft dollar returns that are real.